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Science News - 12.08.2023
Science News - 12.08.2023
Hot and
Smoky
Record heat and wildfires starkly show
how climate change threatens health
VOL. 204 | NO. 2
Features
18 Extravagance of
Early Galaxies
In its first year, the James Webb Space Telescope
has astonished scientists by discovering oodles
of distant galaxies that are bigger, brighter and
more mature than expected. By Lisa Grossman
News
6 Wildfire smoke clouds the 10 Ancient hominids 14 The asteroid Ryugu
skies over North America. butchered and ate each holds traces of the solar
What does long-term other, scientists claim system’s ingredients
smoke exposure mean for 11 The electron’s round Bottlenose dolphin
human health? shape deepens a mystery moms change their tune
8 El Niño and climate change 12 Behemoth black holes 15 A new device senses
together are driving 4
can merge, signs of when the coronavirus
Earth’s temperatures gravitational waves hint is in the air
to new heights
13 A new Milky Way map 16 The Anthropocene is Departments
9 The risks and rewards of may help ID high-energy closer to getting an
new Alzheimer’s drugs neutrino factories official geologic marker
FROM TOP: NOLAN ZUNK/UNIV. OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN; KATRINA KENNY; GENE J. PUSKAR/AP PHOTO
2 EDITOR’S NOTE
4 NOTEBOOK
Ancient fiber-making; the
surprising way an extinct
“shrimp” used its spikes
31 FEEDBACK
32 SCIENCE VISUALIZED
Humans exploit about a
third of vertebrate species
intermittently over many years and are now focused on answering that question. SCIENCE NEWS EXPLORES
EDITOR , DIGITAL Janet Raloff
The Northern Hemisphere heat waves are being driven by warmer oceans EDITOR , PRINT Sarah Zielinski
ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Jill Sakai
amped up by climate change plus the return of a natural climate cycle called ASSOCIATE DIGITAL EDITOR Lillian Steenblik Hwang
ASSISTANT EDITOR Maria Temming
El Niño, staff writer Nikk Ogasa reports (Page 8). Another factor is meandering jet EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Aaron Tremper
streams, which have pinned hot air in place. SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE
PRESIDENT AND CEO Maya Ajmera
I asked Rosen, Ogasa and earth and climate writer Carolyn Gramling the ques- CHIEF ADVANCEMENT OFFICER Dawn Abel
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Rachel Goldman Alper
tion we at Science News have been asking for a few years now: Is this the year CHIEF PROGRAM OFFICER Michele Glidden
CHIEF, EVENTS AND OPERATIONS Cait Goldberg
that climate change smacks even the least vulnerable? CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING OFFICER
Gayle Kansagor
When it comes to human capacity to withstand extreme heat and high humid- CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER James C. Moore
ity, “there’s this grim feeling like we’re pushing the limit, except we don’t know BOARD OF TRUSTEES
CHAIR Mary Sue Coleman
what the limit is,” Gramling said. She reported last summer that human heat toler- VICE CHAIR Martin Chalfie TREASURER Hayley Bay Barna
SECRETARY Christine Burton AT LARGE Thomas F. Rosenbaum
ance may be lower than thought (SN: 8/27/22, p. 6). People are definitely talking MEMBERS Adam Bly, Christopher Bouton, Lance R. Collins,
Mariette DiChristina, Tessa M. Hill, Charles McCabe,
and thinking more about it, Ogasa said. And he’s adapting himself, going for runs W.E. Moerner, Dianne K. Newman, Roderic Ivan Pettigrew,
Afton Vechery, Gideon Yu, Feng Zhang, Maya Ajmera, ex officio
when it’s least humid. Gramling also noted that there’s been a decrease in the ADVERTISING AND SUBSCRIBER SERVICES
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ADV E RTI SE M E NT
NOTEBOOK
50 YEARS AGO
Microtektites in
the Caribbean YYYLS
microtektites can be deter- The Milky Way’s heart raced about 200 years ago
mined … the discovery of the
origin of the glassy objects Sometime between the American Revolution and the California gold rush, the black hole
might quickly follow suit. at the core of the Milky Way woke up. Called Sagittarius A*, the black hole has been
quiet and dim since it was discovered in the 1970s. It’s thought to have been mostly qui-
UPDATE: Tektites form when escent for eons. But roughly 200 years ago, the goliath, as seen from Earth, suddenly
a space rock slams into Earth, brightened as it let out a brief flare of X-rays, researchers report in the July 6 Nature.
blasting liquefied crust into the At 26,000 light-years away, “Sagittarius A* is the closest
~200
atmosphere that hardens into supermassive black hole to us,” says astronomer Frédéric
glassy particles while falling Marin of the University of Strasbourg in France. “But it’s
to the surface. The Caribbean dormant.” If the black hole is now accreting material into its
microtektites were traced to years ago surrounding disk, it’s at a low rate and therefore difficult to
a 35-million-year-old crater The last time the Milky Way’s observe (SN: 6/4/22, p. 6).
the impact created a blanket active from gas clouds in the galactic
of tektites called the North center. One idea was that Sagittarius A* spit out an X-ray
American strewn field. In 2020, pulse after eating cosmic material, and the clouds recorded
tektites from Thailand pointed the afterglow. But other X-ray sources were possible.
scientists to the source of the Marin and colleagues used a NASA satellite to measure
largest known strewn field, the polarization, or direction, of the X-rays. “This direction
which covers a tenth of Earth’s can act as a compass, pointing to the source,” Marin says.
surface. A bolide slammed into And it pointed straight at the black hole. The data suggest
Laos about 800,000 years ago, that the black hole emitted a pulse about 200 years ago,
and volcanic material has since suddenly growing a million times as bright as it is now. How Gas clouds record the X-ray
glow (orange in this satellite
buried the crater, the team says. often such pulses happen and what caused Sagittarius A* to image) from when our galaxy’s
flare is still unclear, Marin says. — Lisa Grossman core flared two centuries ago.
TEASER RETHINK
A design for tougher, greener tires Lovecraftian critter ate tender prey
A new material design could reduce pollution where the One of the freakiest apex predators to ever haunt the sea
rubber meets the road. Strategically adding weak points may have also been a delicate eater.
to microscopic chains called polymers actually makes the Scientists have assumed that Anomalocaris canadensis,
chains harder to tear, scientists report in the June 23 Science. or “abnormal shrimp from Canada,” used its spiny facial
Because polymers are used in car tires, the findings could help appendages to grab and crush armored trilobites about
reduce plastic pollution as tires wear down over time. 500 million years ago. But a new study suggests the hunter
As tires scrape against the road, they drop tiny particles of wasn’t up to the task. Instead, the creature may have hunted
rubber and plastic polymers that can pollute waterways and soft prey, a team led by paleobiologist Russell Bicknell
contaminate the air. Globally, tires shed about 6 million metric reports in the July 12 Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
tons of this debris into the environment each year. Stronger Scads of fossilized injured trilobites hint that something
polymers that break apart less easily could limit the pollution. attacked them, but no one has yet found proof that
Chemist Stephen Craig of Duke University and colleagues A. canadensis could break exoskeletons, says Bicknell, of
made their tough material by adding easily breakable mol- the American Museum of Natural History in New York
ecules called cross-linkers to the polymers. The polymers act City. So his team tested the spiky limbs’ vigor via computer
like a tangle of spaghetti noodles with the cross-linkers holding simulations. The predator moved most efficiently when its
FROM TOP: H. XHAUFLAIR; KATRINA KENNY
them all together, helping them retain their shape. Individual appendages were outstretched.
Cambrian predator
cross-linkers broke easily when the team stretched the polymer Anomalocaris canadensis And while the limbs were effective
strands, but ripping the bulk material required more force than was the size of a house cat. grabbers, they were too fragile to
expected. The secret to the increased toughness lies in the path attack armored prey. Together,
the tear takes. The tear propagates through the cross-linkers, the results suggest A. canadensis
following the path of least resistance. But making it through was suited for hunting soft crea-
the long polymer strands means breaking many cross-linkers, tures. Its limbs could “absolutely
which requires more force overall. Craig hopes the findings will pincushion something … squishy,”
help extend the lifetimes of car tires. — Skyler Ware Bicknell says. — Nikk Ogasa
Watch a video of tear-resistant rubber in action at bit.ly/SN_ToughTires www.sciencenews.org | August 12, 2023 5
News
ENVIRONMENT
BY MEGHAN ROSEN From across the continent, at the British Smoke from Canadian wildfires blankets this
North America’s summer of smoke may Columbia Centre for Disease Control in baseball stadium in Pittsburgh on June 29. Such
hazy, hazardous conditions may become more
well be a harbinger of what’s to come as Vancouver, environmental epidemiologist common as wildfires become more frequent.
the climate continues to change. Record- Sarah Henderson says those smoky scenes
breaking wildfires in Canada are still look all too familiar. “We’re no strangers to How can wildfire smoke affect
sweeping across the land, and smoke has wildfire smoke,” she says. In previous years, people’s health?
been suffusing the skies for more people, the region has seen extreme episodes Henderson: Wildfire smoke is a really
including in the eastern and midwestern driven by fires in the Pacific Northwest. complex form of air pollution. And we
United States (SN: 6/18/22, p. 16). Frequent These three scientists have been study- have decades of research that tells us
fires like these can mean more smoke ing the health effects of wildfire smoke for exposure to air pollution isn’t good for us.
inhaled, and over longer periods of time. years. They talked to Science News about What we know at this point is that when
What are the health consequences of how smoke impacts human health, what smoke is occurring, there are measurable
breathing in this fumy miasma? Science questions remain and what researchers effects in the population almost imme-
News spoke with three experts to find out. might be able to learn from the current diately. Respiratory effects, especially
Jeffrey Brook is an air pollution expo- fires. These conversations have been for people with preexisting respiratory
sure scientist at the University of Toronto. edited for length and clarity. conditions, such as asthma and COPD
His office is roughly 500 kilometers from [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease],
raging blazes that have engulfed more Why are scientists focusing on are the first things to happen. We gener-
than 9 million hectares in Canada this year. wildfire smoke? ally see that these people need more of
Even at that distance, the air has been bad, O’Dell: The wildfire season has been their rescue medications, meaning that
Brook says, shrouding the city in noxious expanding, so it’s impacting us more their airways are closing up.
gases and tiny particles of burned biomass. throughout the year. And wildfire smoke The magnitude of that impact in
“It’s the worst particulate matter air qual- is different than the typical urban smog those populations seems to be larger for
ity I’ve seen in 30 years or more.” that has been studied historically. wildfire smoke than for other types of air
Some 800 kilometers south, where Emissions from traffic and industry pollution. We also see small detriments to
GENE J. PUSKAR/AP PHOTO
atmospheric scientist Katelyn O’Dell have been decreasing due to success- cognitive performance.
works at George Washington University ful emissions control policies. Because And then there’s quite a bit of evidence
in Washington, D.C., the scene has been those are going down and wildfire smoke around impacts to the developing fetus.
less apocalyptic. But some days you can is going up, it’s really important for us to There’s risk of preterm birth and reduc-
smell smoke in the air, she says, and “the study wildfire smoke and its impacts on tions in birth weight for infants who are
sky doesn’t even look blue.” health. exposed in utero.
CLIMATE Global temperature anomalies during El Niño and La Niña, 1950–May 2023
El Niño months ENSO neutral months La Niña months
Earth sizzles
Temperature anomaly
1
(degrees Celsius)
in record heat
0.5
Converging forces push the
planet into uncharted territory 0
face temperature of the world’s oceans higher global temperatures, while La Niña five-years phenomenon, scientists report
reached 21.1° C, the highest ever recorded. is often correlated with lower ones. 2016 July 25 in a study from the World Weather
It’s been particularly warm in the North is currently the hottest year on record, Attribution network. The European and
Atlantic. In April, sea surface temperatures which “lines up with the strongest El Niño North American heat waves, which would
in some spots surpassed 4 degrees C above event on record,” Arcodia says. have been virtually impossible without cli-
what’s normal for that time of year. And in But El Niño and La Niña don’t always mate change, are likely to occur once every
the Gulf of Mexico, the average sea sur- have predictable outcomes. Arcodia points 10 years and 15 years. The other culprit is
face temperature on July 12 was over 30° C, to 2020. That the second hottest year on the jet stream, a powerful wind that has
the highest recorded for that time of year record occurred during a La Niña under- been meandering and holding hot air over
since satellite monitoring began in 1981. scores the influence of climate warming on many parts of Earth. Climate change may
Such marine heat waves have become record-breaking temperatures, she says. further destabilize the stream, making long
about 50 percent more common over the It’s probably safe to say that El Niño is bouts of extreme heat more common.
New Alzheimer’s drugs are coming struggling through their last year of teach-
ing,” she says. In those circumstances, a
Three lab-made antibodies help clear sticky plaques in the brain five-month reprieve before progressing to
more confusion is significant.
BY LAURA SANDERS None of these drugs stop the disease. So far, the drugs are for people who
There are now three drugs that can But they can buy some time, the data show mild signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
temporarily hold off the mental decline suggest. On average, the 588 people who Scientists don’t expect the drugs to help
caused by Alzheimer’s disease. received donanemab, for instance, stayed once Alzheimer’s has progressed to more
The newest, called donanemab, slowed sharper for a bit over four months longer intense stages. What’s more, the clini-
cognitive decline by about 35 percent than the 594 people who received a pla- cal trials were not representative of the
over the course of a year and a half, cebo. Using a different scale to measure U.S. population, enrolling very few people
according to clinical trial data published symptoms gave an estimate of seven and a who are Black or Hispanic, for instance.
July 17 in JAMA. half months of extra time due to the drug, That leaves a lot to learn.
The finding comes on the heels of made by the pharmaceutical company Eli To be treated with the drugs, a person
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Lilly, based in Indianapolis. Notably, about should have amyloid plaques in their brain,
full approval of another drug, called 80 percent of participants on the drug no confirmed via a brain scan or a cerebro-
lecanemab (brand name Leqembi), that longer had amyloid plaques. Even though spinal fluid test. The donanemab trial also
can also slow the disease’s progres- some of those people were switched to a required people to have excess tau proteins
sion. Another similar drug, aducanumab placebo once their plaques disappeared, in their brains, another sign of Alzheimer’s.
(Aduhelm), received accelerated approval their mental benefits seemed to persist. Autoimmune disorders, medical
in 2021, though access to it is still limited. Results from studies of aducanumab implants that preclude MRI scans that
All three drugs are monoclonal antibod- are more mixed, generating debate about monitor brain reactions and other health
ies. These custom-designed antibodies whether the drug, made by Biogen Inc., issues may also stop someone from being
take inspiration from ones that the body based in Cambridge, Mass., is effective a candidate. People who carry APOE4, a
makes to detect harmful substances, a key (SN: 7/3/21 & 7/17/21, p. 8). version of a gene that ups a person’s risk
part of the immune system. In the brain, In an 18-month-long study of lecanemab, of Alzheimer’s, seem to be at higher risk
the lab-made antibodies attach to specific made by Biogen and Tokyo-based Eisai of harmful side effects from the drugs too.
parts of protein aggregates called amyloid Co., people who got the drug spent about The drugs are administered intrave-
plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. Once five months longer in a mild stage of nously in medical centers, where health
attached, the antibodies call in other Alzheimer’s than people who got a pla- care workers monitor reactions. In the
immune cells to take out the trash. cebo. That may not sound like a lot. And recent trial of donanemab, three deaths KWSF
This cleanup job brings mental benefits, for some people, it might not be worth the were linked to the treatment.
clinical trials suggest. And that finding sup- risks, such as brain swelling and bleeding. People on the drugs should undergo
ports the long-standing idea that amyloid But for others, that delay could be brain scans that can detect possibly dan-
is a key part of Alzheimer’s disease, says meaningful, says geriatric neurologist gerous changes, researchers say. About
neurologist and neuroscientist Erik Musiek Aimee Pierce of Oregon Health & Science a quarter of people in the clinical trials
of Washington University in St. Louis. University in Portland. “Some of my who received a drug developed the worri-
some condition ARIA, or amyloid-related
imaging abnormalities. In a trial of nearly
1,800 people, for instance, about 21 percent
of people who received lecanemab had
TEK IMAGE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES PLUS
perhaps a saber-toothed feline. flesh removal, counters Palmira Saladié, the Kenyan fossil “an interesting scien-
No consensus exists on the species a zooarchaeologist at the Catalan Institute tific curiosity that changes nothing of
identity of the ancient leg fossil. It might of Human Paleoecology and Social significance.”
Electrons are almost perfectly round by temporary “virtual” particles that pop
in and out of existence, giving each elec-
A new result leaves a mysterious cosmic imbalance unsolved tron a spherical halo of electric charge.
If that halo were found to be just slightly
BY EMILY CONOVER world record,” says physicist Tanya Roussy egg-shaped, that could point to how the
Electrons are really, really round. of the University of Colorado Boulder. universe became lopsided toward matter.
A new measurement confirms the Roussy and colleagues gauged the The Big Bang should have created matter
subatomic particle’s spherical shape to particle’s shape by looking at whether and antimatter in equal parts. But matter in
a record level of exactness, physicists electrons pivoted in an electric field. If our universe is common while antimatter
report in the July 7 Science. electrons were slightly egg-shaped rather is scarce. Scientists have suggested that
That near-perfect roundness deepens than round, an electric field would exert a the existence of certain subatomic parti-
the mystery behind how the universe torque on them, much as gravity topples cles could have tipped the balance toward
came to be filled with matter as opposed an egg standing on its end. matter. If those particles exist, they would
to its counterpart, antimatter. Any asym- To see that torque, the team looked for also appear and disappear around the elec-
metry in the electron’s shape, namely changes in the energy levels of charged tron in such a way as to make it oblong. But
the distribution of the particle’s electric molecules of hafnium fluoride. Any torque they would require so much energy that
charge, would point to a related asymme- on the electrons would give the mol- even the world’s biggest particle accelera-
try in the laws of nature, one that could ecules different energy levels depending tor could not produce them, so studies of
explain this feature of the cosmos. on which direction the “egg” was oriented electron roundness are an important test.
The measurement — of a property relative to an electric field. The team found The new finding shows no trace of
known as the electric dipole moment — is no difference in the molecules’ energy lev- hidden particles, leaving unsolved the
twice as precise as the previous best els, confirming the electron’s roundness. mystery of how matter gained the upper
measurement of the electron’s shape (SN: At their most basic level, electrons are hand, says physicist David DeMille of the
11/10/18, p. 7). “I don’t think Guinness pointlike particles without a definite size University of Chicago. That “leaves us
tracks this, but if they did, we’d have a new and shape. But in quantum field theory, with the question of what is out there.”
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Goliath black holes hum as they dance the clocklike ticking of pulsars, spinning
remnants of exploded stars that emit
A new class of gravitational waves may hail from merging galaxies beams of radio waves as they twirl. These
beams sweep past Earth at regular inter-
BY EMILY CONOVER Accelerating massive objects produce vals. Gravitational waves stretching and
Beneath the explosions, collisions and gravitational waves that careen through squeezing the space between the pulsars
other intermittent bangs in the cosmos, the universe, rumpling the fabric of and Earth cause the ticks, observed with
scientists suspect a nonstop soundtrack spacetime upon which reality is embroi- radio telescopes, to come early or late.
plays, created by ripples in spacetime dered. In 2015, scientists with the U.S. The teams ensured they were detect-
continuously rolling through the universe. observatory LIGO detected gravitational ing the gravitational waves, rather than
After more than a decade of searching, waves for the first time. Those waves uninteresting jitters, by looking for a type
scientists may have finally heard that were spawned by mergers of smaller of correlation between different pulsars.
background hum. black holes, entirely different beasts than Pulsars near one another on the sky should
Teams of researchers from around the the supermassive ones that lurk at the show similar timing shifts, but those that
world report June 28 the first clear evi- centers of galaxies. are at right angles to one another should
dence of these gravitational waves. Unlike While LIGO picks up gravitational wave observe opposite shifts: One pulsar’s blips
previously detected gravitational waves, blips that can last mere fractions of a sec- come early while the other’s come late.
these new ones have ripples that are ond, orbiting supermassive black holes are After 15 years of monitoring doz-
superlong — on the scale of light-years. expected to pump out waves continuously ens of pulsars, that hallmark has finally
The likely source: innumerable pairs of for millions of years, creating ripples that been observed, scientists with the North
gargantuan black holes that churn the blanket the cosmos with a constant hum. A merican Nanohertz Observatory for
spacetime cauldron as they orbit one Across the universe, galaxies regularly Gravitational Waves, or NANOGrav, report
another. merge. As they do, their supermassive in Astrophysical Journal Letters. “There’s
If that hunch is correct, the result would black holes are thought to orbit one nothing in nature that can mimic this,”
provide the first evidence that pairs of another and emit gravitational waves. says Chiara Mingarelli, a Yale astrophysi-
black holes with masses billions of times Many pairs of black holes would be doing cist and NANOGrav team member.
that of the sun can coalesce into one. That this orbital dance at once, in the many The telltale correlation was also evident
would be “extremely interesting, because merging galaxies throughout the cosmos, in 25 years of observations by pulsar timing
we have essentially no handle on what the all sending out their spacetime ripples. arrays in Europe and India, another team
most massive black holes are doing,” says Detecting this mishmash of waves reports in papers accepted in Astronomy &
astrophysicist Meg Urry of Yale University, required scientists to MacGyver the Astrophysics. Scientists with the Parkes
who was not involved in the research. Milky Way. They turned the galaxy into Pulsar Timing Array in Australia report
their results in Astrophysical Journal Letters
Scientists have detected signs of gravitational and in a paper accepted in Publications of
waves from supermassive black holes at the the Astronomical Society of Australia. The
centers of merging galaxies (illustrated). Chinese Pulsar Timing Array’s team reports
its finding in Research in Astronomy and
Astrophysics.
Some scientists think that supermassive
black holes in merging galaxies would
never draw close enough to coalesce,
or to emit gravitational waves like the
AURORE SIMONNET/SONOMA STATE UNIV., NANOGRAV
Neutrinos map
the Milky Way Gamma ray
Scientists find ghostly particles
from the galactic plane
Neutrinos
BY JAMES R. RIORDON
Scientists have made the first image of
the Milky Way using neutrinos.
The extremely low-mass subatomic Three ways to map the Milky Way These images of the Milky Way show the galactic
plane in visible light (top), gamma rays (middle) and particles called high-energy neutrinos
particles have no electric charge, and (bottom). The particle-based map, made with artificial intelligence and data from a detector in
they pass easily through gas, dust, stars Antarctica, could help researchers pinpoint neutrino birthplaces within the Milky Way.
and even Earth, where specialized sen-
sors can detect them (SN: 12/8/18, p. 14). see the universe with neutrino eyes.” Of the 100,000 or so neutrinos that
High-energy neutrinos zip throughout With neutrino astronomy, research- IceCube scientists observe each year,
the cosmos, but where they come from ers could potentially see distant objects some leave long tracks in the detector
is usually a mystery. in a way that no other telescopes can that potentially point to where the neu-
Now, by combining artificial intelli- match. That’s because neutrinos can trinos came from. Many of the neutrino
gence with data collected by the IceCube cross huge expanses of space without signals in IceCube, though, are known as
detector in Antarctica over the course of being absorbed or deflected along the cascade events. They make bursts of light
a decade, researchers have found the first way, which could obscure their origins. in the detector but don’t reveal neutrino
evidence of high-energy neutrinos that X-rays, gamma rays, optical light and the origins as well as tracks can.
originated from inside the Milky Way and charged particles that make up cosmic “This is data we used to throw away in
mapped the particles onto an image of the rays, on the other hand, can be deflected terms of astronomy,” Kurahashi Neilson
galaxy’s plane. It’s the first time our gal- or absorbed. says. There’s still information indicat-
axy has been imaged with anything other To physicist Naoko Kurahashi Neilson ing where the neutrinos come from in
than light. of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the the data. But it’s difficult to identify the
The map includes signs of specific map that she and her team produced promising cascades in the hundreds of
high-energy neutrino sources within the is the latest contribution to a shift in thousands of meaningless, background
Milky Way that might be the remnants of neutrino science. In the past, neutrino events that IceCube has collected.
past supernova star explosions, the cores observatories like IceCube haven’t pro- Kurahashi Neilson decided to take
of collapsed supergiant stars or other as- vided the sorts of views of the sky that up the challenge by plowing through a
yet-unidentified objects, the team reports telescopes relying on optical light, X-rays decade of IceCube cascade data with the
in the June 30 Science. But more research or gamma rays offer. help of an artificial intelligence method
is needed to clearly pick those sorts of “When I first joined IceCube, I used known as a neural network. “You can
features out of the data. to do air quotes” when using the phrase train the neural nets to identify which
Previously, only a few high-energy neutrino astronomy, Kurahashi Neilson events are worth keeping … [and] which
neutrinos have been traced to their says. “I don’t do that anymore.… I don’t events are more background-like,”
potential birthplaces, all of which are have to because we’re starting to resolve Kurahashi Neilson says.
outside the Milky Way. Those neutrinos things” in neutrino images that resem- It’s an approach Kurahashi Neilson
include two that appeared to come from ble the astronomical images from other pioneered in 2017 and steadily improved
black holes shredding their companion telescopes. until she and her colleagues could iden-
stars and others from a highly active gal- The downside is that neutrinos are tify the neutrinos that the team used in
axy known as a blazar (SN: 6/18/22, p. 8; extremely hard to detect. The IceCube the new map.
ICECUBE COLLABORATION/SCIENCE 2023
SN: 8/4/18, p. 6). detector is enormous in part to overcome “It’s an impressive analysis, and the
“We’re quite unambiguously seeing that challenge. It consists of 5,160 sensors techniques may well not yet be pushed to
neutrinos from both galactic and extra- embedded within a cubic kilometer of their limits,” Scholberg says. “Clearly a lot
galactic space these days,” says Kate Antarctic ice. The detector’s large size more work needs to be done, but it’s very
Scholberg, a physicist at Duke University increases the odds of seeing a tiny frac- exciting to see the basic expectation [of
who was not involved with the research. tion of the neutrinos flying through space Milky Way neutrinos] verified. This is an
“There’s so much more to learn, and it can from the Milky Way and other places in important step forward in understanding
be tremendous fun to figure out how to the cosmos. the high-energy particle sky.”
ASTRONOMY ANIMALS
around, scientists have a device for you. the liquid get filtered out of the air with a air,” says aerosol scientist Linsey Marr of
Researchers have created a machine a lit- HEPA filter attached to the device. After Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Her team is
tle bigger than a toaster that can quickly five minutes of collection, the liquid is working on a detector of its own.
detect airborne SARS-CoV-2. pumped to a biosensor. The device that Chakrabarty and col-
It takes only five minutes to detect as The biosensor consists of an electrode leagues built still has some challenges
few as seven to 35 viral particles per cubic attached to a llama nanobody, a specialized to overcome. For instance, it is about as
meter of air, scientists report July 10 in immune system protein made by llamas noisy as a vacuum cleaner or a ringing
Nature Communications. That is about and their relatives. Nanobodies fight infec- phone. That’s probably too loud to use
as sensitive as PCR nasal swab tests, says tions much the way antibodies do but are continuously in a classroom or office,
aerosol scientist Rajan Chakrabarty of smaller and perhaps tougher than human Marr says, but could be tolerated for
Washington University in St. Louis. antibodies (SN: 10/10/20 & 10/24/20, p. 7). 10 minutes.
A major challenge when sampling air- The nanobody used in the device grabs Such detectors cost up to $1,900 to
borne viruses is collecting enough air to any passing coronavirus by its spike pro- build in a lab, Chakrabarty says. Commer-
concentrate viral particles at detectable tein. Electricity passing through the duo cial versions may initially be too expensive
levels. Previous attempts have sucked in causes certain amino acids in the spike for home use, Marr says, but could be
between 2 and 8 cubic meters per minute. protein to lose electrons. Another device used to monitor hospitals, airports and
This detector pulls in 1,000 cubic meters attached to the electrode detects that other public areas. The devices could be
per minute. loss as a change in voltage, signaling that linked into HVAC systems that could ramp
To trap the virus, Chakrabarty and col- the coronavirus is in the air. up ventilation and filtration if the virus is
leagues swirled liquid at high speed to To test the detector, the team sent the found, Marr suggests.
A lake may mark a new geologic epoch relatively high temperatures cause miner-
als to crystallize near the top of the water.
Sediments keep pristine records of humans’ changes to Earth The crystals fall to the lake’s bottom like
snow, where they lie undisturbed. “You
BY MCKENZIE PRILLAMAN humankind since the last ice age. get these lovely stripes,” Turner says. “And
Scientists are one step closer to defining Scientists first started using the term you can resolve what year [they’re from]
a new chapter in geology, one in which Anthropocene in the early 2000s to refer pretty much by counting backwards from
humans have become the dominant driver to the ongoing time of humans altering the the surface layer, like a tree ring.”
of Earth’s climate and environment. planet on a global scale. Although framed The layers capture a sharp rise in
Out of 12 locations around the world, in terms of geology, the Anthropocene radioactivity and other evidence of
Crawford Lake in Milton, Canada, west lacked a formal geologic definition. human activity starting in the early 1950s
of Toronto, has been selected as the site Still, the idea spread. “It exploded so (SN: 10/15/16, p. 14).
that would mark the official beginning of quickly into other disciplines without But not all scientists agree that the
the Anthropocene, a proposed geologic it being defined,” says Simon Turner, Anthropocene began merely 70 years ago,
epoch starting in the 1950s. Research- an earth scientist at University College or that it should be defined as a geologic
ers made the announcement July 11 at a London. So “that’s what we’ve been try- epoch at all. “Any time you draw a hard
news conference during the Max Planck ing to do ever since.” line in the geologic record or in any other
Climate Conference for a Sustainable In 2009, the International Commission system, you’re creating a binary — there’s
Anthropocene, which was held in Berlin. on Stratigraphy convened a committee a before and there’s an after,” says paleo-
The lake bottom’s sediments store one to characterize the Anthropocene and ecologist Jacquelyn Gill of the University
of the most precise records of humans’ see whether it deserved a spot on the of Maine in Orono. “We know human
alteration of Earth, including upticks in geologic time scale. That committee has impacts began well before 1950.”
plutonium from nuclear weapons testing, now chosen Crawford Lake from a dozen Retaining an informal and flexible con-
ash from burning fossil fuels, and heavy contenders as the Anthropocene’s Global cept, like what’s used now in disciplines
metals and microplastics. Boundary Stratotype Section and Point. beyond geology, might be more benefi-
But the Anthropocene isn’t an official This is a reference site that shows a change cial, Gill adds. “It’s more powerful as a tool
geologic epoch yet. Several more com- in rock, ice or other layers to mark the in that way,” she says, “than it is to try to
mittees of the International Commission beginning of a new geologic time period. confine it or constrain it to a narrow defi-
on Stratigraphy, the scientific group From coral reefs to ice cores to peat nition that then creates confusion about
responsible for defining geologic time, bogs, each candidate site holds a remark- everything that came before.”
must approve of the proposed epoch able record of human activity in its layers. Still, at tempting to def ine the
before it can be added to the geo- Selecting Crawford Lake was “like choos- Anthropocene as a formal geologic term
SARAH ROBERTS
logic time scale. Doing so would end ing a favorite child,” says Turner, who is underscores humankind’s rapid and
the nearly 12,000-year-long Holocene secretary and a voting member of the intense impact on the planet, Turner says.
Epoch, which encompasses the rise of committee. “We’ve become a geological force.”
Crawford
Lake in Milton,
Canada, has
been selected
as the marker
for a proposed
geologic epoch
characterized
by humankind’s
impact on Earth.
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FEATURE
Scientists at the
University of Texas at
Austin search for distant
galaxies in the first deep
field image taken by
the James Webb Space
Telescope, released in
July 2022.
W
hen Brant Robertson saw a new University of Texas at Austin. “But I was not this
measurement of the distance to a optimistic. I thought, ‘Yeah, yeah, we know what
familiar galaxy, he laughed out loud. we’re going to see.’ And I was wrong.”
For more than a decade, the gal-
axy had been a contender for the most distant ever Hubble’s surprises
observed. In 2012, Robertson and colleagues used For longtime galaxy hunters, JWST’s bounty may
data from the Hubble Space Telescope to show feel like déjà vu. In the 1990s, Hubble took a long,
that the galaxy’s light had shone across the uni- deep look at an apparently blank patch of sky, just
verse from about 13.3 billion years ago — less than to see what was there. The result was thousands of
400 million years into the universe’s existence. galaxies, some captured as they looked when the
Not everyone believed it. “We got a lot of universe was only a billion years old.
flak,” recalls Robertson, an astrophysicist at the Those galaxies looked mature, like they had
University of California, Santa Cruz. “It seemed too already been through multiple rounds of supernova
implausible that it was at such a great distance.” It explosions and star formation. Thus, they were not
felt like he was going around claiming to have seen the first to form in the universe, astronomers real-
the Loch Ness monster. ized. The first galaxies must date even further back.
But in September, the James Webb Space The hunt for those original galaxies was part of
Telescope, JWST for short, aimed its massive mir- the motivation for building JWST, says astrophysicist
ror and sensitive spectrograph at the same galaxy Erica Nelson of the University of Colorado Boulder.
and showed that Robertson and his colleagues were “The reason we have JWST is, they launched Hubble
right. The galaxy’s light is indeed incredibly old, and saw that the things in the early universe were
dating to just 390 million years after the Big Bang. very evolved,” she says. “They were like, ‘Wow! There
It was like someone had drained the lake, and the are galaxies way earlier than we thought’ ” — even
monster was sitting there at the bottom. further back in time than Hubble can see.
And this galactic Nessie is not alone. So far, in Hubble wasn’t designed to see all the way back to
its first year of observations, JWST has turned the universe’s beginning. The telescope is sensitive
up thousands of distant galaxies dating to the to ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared wavelengths
early universe, many more than astronomers had of light. But by the time light from the universe’s
OPPOSITE PAGE: NOLAN ZUNK/UNIV. OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
expected. Some of those galaxies are brighter, more early days reaches us, it has stretched all the way
massive or more mature than astronomers would into infrared wavelengths that are longer than
have thought. They are now scratching their heads Hubble’s (or human) eyes can see. That’s because
trying to explain how the galaxies could have grown the universe is expanding; everything in it is mov-
up so fast. ing away from everything else. And as light sources
A lot of the extreme distances still need to be move away from us, their light stretches — the
confirmed, but initial evidence suggests there’s rea- wavelengths of light grow longer, or redder.
son to believe that many, if not most, of the galaxies The amount of stretching of that light, known
really are that far away. as the redshift, is astronomers’ proxy for cosmic
“I was expecting to find some galaxies at this distance and age. The present-day universe is at
[distance]. Some people were pessimistic; I wasn’t,” redshift zero. A redshift of 1 corresponds to about
says Steven Finkelstein, an astrophysicist at the 6 billion years after the Big Bang. A redshift of 4 is
about 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, and so on. gas was diffuse and opaque, plunging the universe
In 1995, redshift 4 was the furthest back that into what astronomers call the cosmic dark ages.
Hubble could detect. Over the next 20 years, Sometime during these dark ages, the first stars
upgrades to the telescope and new observing tech- formed and began to clump together into galaxies
niques pushed the frontier back to redshift 7, which with the help of an invisible and still mysterious
corresponds to 800 million years after the Big Bang. material known as dark matter. But because of the
In 2012, the galaxy that Robertson studied appeared opacity of that neutral hydrogen, all astronomers
at a possible, though at the time unconfirmed, red- can really observe is that the universe became trans-
shift of 11.9. Later, a galaxy called GN-z11 clocked in parent again at about 200 million years after the Big
at a redshift of 11.1, or 400 million years after the Bang, as hydrogen atoms lost their electrons.
Big Bang. “We know there was a transition where the
These tantalizing discoveries set off a search hydrogen was reionized somehow,” Robertson says.
for even more distant galaxies. “This has kind of Thanks to observations with Hubble and other tele-
become a game in extragalactic astronomy, where scopes, “we think galaxies are very likely the agents
everyone wants to find the highest redshift, most of that process,” he says. Light from the youngest,
distant galaxy,” astrophysicist Jeyhan Kartaltepe of most massive stars in those early galaxies might
the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York have knocked electrons off atoms in the hydro-
said in April in Minneapolis at an American Physical gen gas between galaxies. “But how that process
Society meeting. “Become the new record holder, unfolds, we have relatively little information on,”
right? It’s fun.” Robertson says.
By 2016, when GN-z11 was discovered, the hunt JWST can help fill in those details. Taking a cen-
had stalled. Astronomers had wrung everything sus of the galaxies that were around during the
they could out of existing technology. era of reionization could help illuminate how it
“It really requires JWST to push to even earlier got started.
times,” Kartaltepe said, “which we need to under- And so, astronomers were giddy with excitement
stand the very beginnings of galaxy formation.” when JWST launched on Christmas Day in 2021 and
started collecting data about six months later. The
The importance of being early first images were unveiled with great fanfare on
The quest to find the earliest galaxies is about more July 12, 2022 (SN: 8/13/22, p. 30). But astronomers
than just bragging rights. These galaxies could shed had to wait until the next day to download the rest
light on a key event in the universe’s infancy called of the data the telescope had acquired while getting
reionization. up and running.
In the beginning, there was the Big Bang. After “We knew, somewhere, on some computer,
that initial cataclysm, the universe continued to our photons were sitting there, waiting for us to
expand and cool. After about 372,000 years, it had see them,” Kartaltepe said. “As soon as the data
cooled enough for electrons, protons and neutrons were released in July, we jumped on it and started
to combine into hydrogen atoms. That hydrogen analyzing.”
Astronomers sifted through the images like a
cosmic Where’s Waldo, picking the reddest-looking
candidate galaxies out of the pack.
Extremely distant candidates popped out quickly.
In several different regions of the sky, JWST found
little red dots corresponding to galaxies that
appeared to be at astonishing redshifts: 10, 13, even
S. FINKELSTEIN ET AL/ARXIV.ORG 2022 (CC BY 4.0)
redshift of 11.9 to 11.58. But with one of the other metric redshift of 16.4, or just 240 million years
galaxies, the team claimed a new record for most after the Big Bang.
distant galaxy ever confirmed, with a redshift of “That was higher redshift than we expected to
13.2, just 325 million years after the Big Bang. see with CEERS,” says Finkelstein, the survey’s lead
The spectra the team analyzed were detailed researcher. CEERS was designed to practice using
enough to reveal some properties of the galax- JWST in its different observing modes and give
ies, Robertson and colleagues reported in April in astronomers some data to play with, not neces-
Nature Astronomy. They’re all about a hundredth sarily to set new records.
the size and mass of the Milky Way, but they are In its first chunk of data, CEERS contained a
surprising number of apparently high-redshift that most of the redshifts are legit and save the
galaxies. So Finkelstein and colleagues asked the extra effort of taking the full spectrum for the really
director of the Space Telescope Science Institute interesting ones. “It is exciting that the photomet-
in Baltimore, which operates JWST, for some ric redshifts tend to hold up,” Robertson says. “It
extra telescope time to chase down the spectra of gives us some hope that some of these really distant
CEERS-93316, as well as a galaxy that Finkelstein things could be real.”
had found with a photometric redshift of about
12. He named that galaxy Maisie’s Galaxy in honor Too bright to explain
of his daughter, because he found it on her ninth Another outcome of JWST analyses so far is that
birthday. (Maisie didn’t mind that her dad had to there are more bright galaxies around redshift 10
work that day — “I got other birthday presents,” she than expected. Galaxy brightness is an indicator of
says, though she did wish her galaxy was the poten- galaxy mass, and thus star abundance. The brighter
tial record holder.) the galaxy, the more stars it must have to produce
When the spectral data came through, Finkelstein’s all that light.
colleague Pablo Arrabal Haro, an astrophysicist at Galaxies are born in halos of dark matter, whose
the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, based gravity pulls in and concentrates ordinary matter.
in Tucson, worked through the weekend to write Cosmologists know from simulations and theory
up results before anyone else. how many dark matter halos the universe would
CEERS-93316’s 16.4 redshift turned out to be have had when the first galaxies formed. They also
wrong. The galaxy was actually at a redshift of have a decent idea of how massive those halos were
4.9, putting it 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang — in the universe’s first 500 million years and how
practically modern compared with some of JWST’s much of that mass ended up in the form of hydro-
other finds. gen and helium, the raw material for making stars.
The galaxy’s photometric redshift was so high Theoretically, if all that gas turned into stars, the
because of a weird coincidence. Light streaming largest a galaxy could get would be about 10 billion
from hydrogen in the galaxy was redshifted such times the mass of the sun.
that it looked like it jumped in brightness at a wave- In reality, researchers expect early galaxies to be
length suggestive of the huge distance. But when much less massive, because modern galaxies never
the full spectrum came in, that single jump was convert all their gas into stars.
JWST: ESA; BACKGROUND: NASA, ESA, P. OESCH AND B. ROBERTSON/UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ, A. FEILD/STSCI,
revealed to be several separate peaks, suggesting JWST has not turned up any galaxy near the theo-
a smaller redshift. retical upper limit. But it has found many more hefty
Maisie’s Galaxy, however, is almost as distant as early galaxies than predicted. The confirmed JADES
Early galaxy quest the photometric redshift implied, Arrabal Haro and galaxies weigh in at about 100 million solar masses,
JWST has detected
many galaxies from the colleagues reported in a paper posted in March to just 330 million years after the Big Bang. Some of
early universe (a few are arXiv.org. And in an April paper posted to arXiv.org, the CEERS galaxies seem to have over a billion suns’
shown on this timeline). the team reported spectra for more than 30 other worth of stars as early as 450 million years after the
These galaxies could
shed light on reioniza- galaxies with redshifts of roughly between 8 and Big Bang. Two galaxies discovered in another JWST
tion, the process that 10. So photometric redshift estimates are generally survey, called COSMOS-Web, appear to be about
ended the cosmic dark reliable, Finkelstein says. 5 billion solar masses as early as 350 million years
ages, when the universe
was shrouded in dark- “Although we have this notable failure case, that’s after the Big Bang, astronomer Caitlin Casey of the
ness. Some of these a pathological case,” he says. It’s “not devastating.” University of Texas at Austin said at the June First
galaxies, the “universe That’s good news for JWST’s observing schedule: Light meeting.
breakers,” appear to
be more massive than Astronomers won’t have to follow up with the full “With these massive beacons, you can test the
theory can explain. spectrum for every distant galaxy. They can believe limits of how fast you can assemble that much
Cosmic Big
ADAPTED BY C. CHANG
photometric redshifts between about 7 and 9, mean- mation could explain the universe breakers without
ing they grew up in the first 800 million years of the breaking the universe, physicist Avishai Dekel of the
universe. But their stellar masses appear to rival Hebrew University in Jerusalem and colleagues sug-
or exceed that of the Milky Way, about 60 billion gested in a paper published May 25 in the Monthly
solar masses. Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Nelson affectionately calls them the “universe And there’s still the question of whether the uni-
breakers.” Nothing that massive should have been verse breakers’ masses and distances will hold up. A
able to form that fast, she says. “As soon as we saw spectrum of one of them has already revealed it to
it, we were like, this is bananas.” be a galaxy at redshift 5.6 with an actively feeding
Barely enough ordinary matter is even believed black hole creating extra light — so not a universe
to have existed back then to create the universe breaker after all.
breakers, says astrophysicist Mike Boylan-Kolchin JWST’s second observing cycle began in July, and
of the University of Texas at Austin. Regions where Nelson will take spectra of the rest of the universe
budding galaxies formed would have had to turn all breakers to find out if they are truly abounding with
their atoms into stars. stars, filled with black holes or something else.
NIELS BOHR INSTITUTE/UNIV. OF COPENHAGEN
“We have this reservoir of atoms,” he says. Meanwhile, another group of astronomers will
“Almost every single one of them has to be in stars test JWST’s limits, hunting for galaxies at red-
or in galaxies” if the universe breakers are for real. shift 15 or greater. So by the telescope’s second
“If these observations and their interpretation is birthday next summer, there may be new distance
correct … it’s very hard to accommodate them in records.
our current models,” he says.
Over the last few months, theorists have come Explore more
up with several ways to explain the universe break- Ivo Labbé et al. “A population of red candidate
ers. One of the most dramatic options would be to massive galaxies ~600 Myr after the Big Bang.”
add some extra dark energy, the mysterious sub- Nature. February 22, 2023.
The
Telescope
Whisperer
O
ne of a telescope operator’s primary astronomy, and passion for that, is what I look for.”
jobs is to keep any stray light out of the Nearly three decades later, Rigby’s palpable joy
instrument. Earthly and other unwel- in discussing the success of JWST, which launched
come photons can swamp the cosmic on December 25, 2021, has made her one of the
light from distant stars and galaxies. During more public faces of the telescope. She presented the
than a decade as a project scientist for the James telescope’s first images at the White House and
Webb Space Telescope, Jane Rigby obsessed over has given keynote speeches at some of the biggest
BRITT GRISWOLD AND JAY FRIEDLANDER/NASA
Jane Rigby is the senior minimizing light leaks — with extraordinary success. astronomy meetings (SN: 8/13/22, p. 30). During
project scientist for The sky looks darker to JWST than most anyone public appearances, she often wears JWST-themed
the James Webb Space
Telescope. Her expertise had hoped. socks, scarves and pins. “I have JWST socks for
and enthusiasm have Rigby herself, now the senior project scientist for pretty much every day of the week,” she says.
made her a public face JWST, is a source of light. She has also lit a path for queer astronomers,
for the telescope, but
she is quick to remind “I remember the light in her eyes,” says astro- as well as others who are historically underrepre-
the world that the physicist Jane Charlton, who met Rigby the summer sented in astronomy. Rigby has been out as part
telescope’s success is a before her freshman year at Penn State and later of the LGBTQ+ community since 2000, when she
true team effort involv-
ing tens of thousands of advised her research. “Jane had incredible grades, met her now-wife when they were both astronomy
people. but that’s not necessarily what I look for. The love of graduate students at the University of Arizona in
“I’m a very observational astronomer,” she says. ways to use JWST and met with other team mem-
“I will use any telescope I can get my hands on.” bers to make sure the final telescope would deliver
All that telescope time meant she was ready to on those goals. Would the telescope materials glow
join the JWST team when the opportunity came. or release gases that could freeze to the machine?
“Because she had seen data from Spitzer and Could JWST use two cameras simultaneously? Could
Hubble,” JWST’s precursors, says astronomer Matt it study moving targets, like asteroids within the
Mountain of the Association of Universities for solar system (SN: 11/5/22, p. 14)?
Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C., “she “Because she is a working scientist who really
knew what she was looking for.” wanted to use the data,” Mountain says, “she was
an ideal choice for operations scientist,” a job she
Meeting JWST moved up to in 2018. “In these complex spaces,
Rigby began working on JWST in 2010, when she with all the engineering, the personalities, the poli-
took a job at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in tics at NASA, working with contractors, she always
Greenbelt, Md., as the telescope’s deputy operations keeps her eye on the prize: What science are we
project scientist. trying to do?”
One of the first things she did was “I will use any Rigby bridged the divide between the
read the report of an independent science and engineering teams, helping
Before JWST’s launch in review panel that found that the tele-
telescope I them speak a common language. Her job
2021, engineer Larkin
Carey cleaned every scope was mismanaged, over budget can get my has been “a lot of active listening and
square centimeter of the by billions of dollars and would launch hands on.” soft power, a lot of synthesizing and a
telescope’s mirrors by years later than originally planned. “I’ve dose of specialized technical expertise,”
hand. Here, he removes JANE RIGBY
the cover that kept the certainly been four years from launch she says. “Oftentimes I’m the big-picture
telescope’s instruments multiple times,” she says. person in a room full of specialists.”
safe from contaminants Before launch, most of her time was devoted to After the telescope launched, got in position and
and stray light while it
was being assembled making sure that changes to the telescope’s design unfolded itself — “the six-month unwrapping of the
and tested. wouldn’t mess up the science. She imagined possible Christmas present,” Rigby says — her job shifted to
characterizing how well the telescope works. In
practically every metric, it’s a dream come true.
There’s better-than-expected image quality,
higher sensitivity, faster response times and a
longer potential mission lifetime than predicted
before launch — and practically no light leaks. The
telescope’s great golden mirrors are exposed to
space, and light can scatter off dust grains on the
mirrors, registering on images as faint, diffuse
patterns the team calls “wisps” and “claws,” or a
ghostly streak dubbed “the lightsaber.” But the mir-
rors proved remarkably dust-free, meaning the sky
appears incredibly dark.
“It’s not an accident that the telescope works so
well,” she says. “That was careful work beforehand.”
When asked about such successes, and her own,
Rigby points to a huge amount of work by tens of
thousands of people. “I understand the desire to
humanize something that can seem really big and
impersonal. But I don’t like the singling out,” she
says. “I try to reflect it back to the team.” It took
thousands of people and tasks to ensure JWST’s suc-
cess. Engineer Larkin Carey, with Ball Aerospace, for
example, cleaned every square centimeter of the
CHRIS GUNN/NASA
in their careers was helpful to Traci Johnson, a data embraces your authentic self.”
scientist who was a graduate student in astron-
omy in Sharon’s lab at the University of Michigan. Explore more
Johnson identifies as lesbian and nonbinary and Jane Rigby et al. “The science performance of
came out during graduate school. “I realized it is JWST as characterized in commissioning.”
possible to be out, and be happy, and also have a Publications of the Astronomical Society of the
really amazing career,” Johnson says. Pacific. April 2023.
other mammals — run too hot for most may rise again, taking its place among
fungi. “Our bodies are like Death Valley,” the oak and hemlock,” Monosson writes.
Monosson writes. An internal tempera- For now, the best hope may be pre-
ture of 98.6° Fahrenheit (37° Celsius) venting fungal diseases in the first place.
is white-hot for organisms that prefer “When humans first began moving ani-
54° to 86° F (12° to 30° C). What’s more, mals and plants, cut forests, expanded
our immune systems are quite adept agricultural lands, there was no thought
at fending off potential fungal foes. So to planetary protection,” Monosson
A young American chestnut tree grows on a
while people who are immunocompro- research farm, where scientists are searching writes. “Now we know better.”
mised are at higher risk for fungal for ways to protect the tree against blight. — Erin Garcia de Jesús
AN ASSEMBLY OF
ADVOCATES
The Society’s Advocate Program is a yearlong professional
development program that provides educators across
the country with training and resources to engage their
students in scientific research. Advocates encourage
students from underrepresented races and ethnicities
(shown above) met in Washington, D.C., on an
all-expenses-paid trip to the Advocate Training Institute.
During the weekend-long conference, the Advocates
set goals for the year, took part in peer-led sessions
to share best practices and created connections that
and/or low-income households to enter STEM research will underpin a network of support for the coming
competitions. academic year.
As the 2022 – 2023 school year drew to a close, As the program enters its ninth year, more than
Advocates were already preparing for a fall of STEM 4,400 students have entered science competitions
exploration. In June, the newest cohort of 100 educators under the guidance of Society Advocates.
Tallies of the most common ways humans use wild vertebrates, by number of species
Numbers within circle intersections denote species used for two or more purposes
Reptiles Birds
Amphibians
101 46
37 15
24
17 251 54
17 28 42
8
650 70 57 272 20 182 3,219 918 372